Viking Words in English

How many loanwords from Old Nose are there in the standard English language? Viking origin of the words ‘ransack’ and ‘slaughter’ probably would not surprise anyone, but very “peaceful” words like ‘leg’, ‘sky’ or ‘window’ are also of Scandinavian provenance. The verb ‘get’, one of the most used in English, was actually borrowed from Old Norse. Meaning of the loanwords and the grammatical category to which they belong, if properly interpreted, may be a rich source of information on Viking settlement and subsequent assimilation of Norsemen into the culture of England. This is what the research of Dr Sara Pons-Sanz of the School of English Studies (University of Nottingham) aims at. The project, which is funded by the British Academy, examines all the Viking words that were borrowed from Old Norse to Old English. Words such as ‘husband’ that point to social relationships show that Norsemen integrated quickly. The other sign of cultural assimilation is disappearance of Old Norse as a spoken language in England by the 12th century. How deep the assimilation was is seen in the loanword ‘they’. It is a pronoun, a very difficult word to adapt into a new language. Dr Pons-Sanz researched the texts of legal codes, homilies, charts, literary works and inscriptions. Chronological and dialectal analysis allowed to track the process of integration for certain words. For instance, the word ‘fellow’ (ON félagi ‘business partner’) was first attested in East Anglia.
The list of Old Norse loanwords below is far from being complete. However, it gives rather representative examples of Viking cultural assimilation in England.

Dear Sir.
Regarding words of Scandinavian provenance they may also be originated in old English as old English and the Scanidinavian languages are closely related. You will find thiese words also in German which is a W- Germanic language as English. All Germanic languages are of the same root so “new” words in English are often words forgotten reappearing. In Icelandic we use the word “stafróf” for alphabet, it is a old English word “stævrow” or a row of staves. Its a wery see-trough word that you should use again.

Dear Asgeir,
Thanks for your comment. To be sure, both in Old English and Old Norse there are very many words, which were not borrowed but share the same common Germanic or west Germanic root. For example, Old English fæther and Old Norse faðer come from the same root, and the English word father is not a loanword from Old Norse. However, many words are proven to be loans. Old English word for “leg” was sconken, and it was replaces by a loanword, whereas sconken became “shanks”.

OE husbonda “male head of a household” from ON húsbóndi “master of the house.” From hús “house” + bóndi “householder, dweller, freeholder, peasant.” Böndr (singular: bóndi) were free men who worked on the land that they owned, see Viking Society in Iceland: Key Concepts.

Hi! Well, me I’m not a linguist or expert in Old Norse (wish I were!) and, in fact, I’ve posted on the ‘viking mottos’ forum (looking for a VERY ELUSIVE translation from modern English) – but I AM a keen amateur philologist

.. and I do know that English evolved from a kind of amalagam of Anglo-saxon and Old Norse. As some of you may know, the Danes and Norwegians, coming first as plunderers, began to settle down in England – especially in the North-Eastern half of it – from about the ninth century onward. By Knut’s time (circa the 1030’s to 1040’s ) the famous Earldoms (more than half of them former ‘Danelaugh’ territory) had become well established, each pretty much with their own dialect.
The two languages – Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse – had quite a lot of etymology in common but some important differences of case inflexion, verb conjugations and pronouns – with the result that the amalagam that emerged (which became known as ‘English’) simply threw away a lot of these. English is fairly unique among world languages in having so few verbal conjugations and case inflexions.
If we read MIDDLE ENGLISH (by Chaucer’s time – i.e. late 13th century) we already see many of these beginning to disappear – for mood and person and for tense, for example.

But there was some duplication also; ‘Craft’ comes from an Anglo-Saxon, ‘skill’ from Old Norse (add Norman French ‘expertise’ and it becomes still more interesting!); similarly: ‘Sick’ (from Anglo-Saxon), ‘ill’ (from Old Norse), ‘poorly’ (from Norman French) and so on ..
still more interesting, perhaps, was what happened to names – especially girl’s names: the good old English and Old Norse ones (like Ethel and Thora – to give just one example of each) were all but swept away by the Norman French (essentailly Biblical) ones like: Mary, Anna or Anne, Josephine, Margaret, Matilda, Elizabeth and so on … and for boys; John, Paul, David, George etc. Only a very few pre-Norman ones, like Edward, Eric and William (not Norman-Frenchified to Guiilaume) and Harold survived. And the Old Norse boy’s names??? You tell me! What were they? And where did THEY go?

I am Editor of the LDS JOURNAL. We are interested in the ‘Scandinavian’ element in our dialect, but would like to be more precise and find out if and how the ‘Old Norse’ of the Norweginan Vikings differed from that of the Danish Vikings. It appears the Lake District of Cumbria was mainly attacked/settled/influenced from the Irish sea by Norse Vikings, around 930AD, whereas the Eastern side was ravaged/settled/occupied by the Danes from Yorkshire and the North East some 70 years earlier.
Many of the ‘Old Norse’ words in our dialect were of course common to Norway and Denmark; do you know of any which were peculiar to one or the other??

English is a basic West Teutonic language:
40% Anglo Saxon with verbs like to forget, to forbid, to speak and common nouns like King, Queen and many others.
Furthermore, 20% of English comes from Old Danish Norse from Denmark and verbs like to get, to give, to kill, to run, to sprint, to strive, to take, to talk, to thrive, to thrust, to want are purely Viking and the plural pronouns like They, Their and Them are 100% Scandinavian.
The Normans introduced Teutonic Frankish words in French forms like the word Guardian, similar to warden, from Frankish Wardjann but many Romance words like Castle, from castel in old French.
The Celtic influence is much much smaller than either Scandinavian and Latin.

Hi, this is an interesting article, however I have to point one mistake I noticed. “raise – (ON rísa to rise)” Yes, raise is a borrowing from Old Norse. However, it is from the causative verb ON reisa “to raise” ( r).

Lots of words are build on ruling dynasts. So who ever rules the area make the words. The people of the county get there name corrupted by the kings scribes. Lots of people did not ever know how to read when old english was being made that is a reason we all can gather many different laugeges and make it one.
Some Norse words are based on Greek, Roman, Arabian and Asian. People that more come cultures like the Norse make the words. Just like the Romans did. The Runes look somewhat like other laugeges of the time. So The Norse scribes could have needed a laugeges for trade and used other cultures words to be understood.
Britain has had one group of Germanic people after another. Although German is close to Slavic and Celtic styles. Britain is in a Celtic area that bleached in. But the scribes were of Norse blood but they were tying to write a Celtic of other culture word so they would understand it.
Case in point Alot of lone words corruption from tying to be understood by others.